At this point it just seems like senseless killing! I also shaw on article on Google news where one news agency selling it as a 'Child with inner rage exploding in a rage of gun fire', they also chucked the 'It's a terrorist attack' out of the window.

All I can say it's sad... very sad. If any of you guys find new post or articles on the killings please share it here!

More than 30 000 people die from gunshot wounds in the United States every year and there are more guns in private hands than in any other country. But a powerful gun lobby and support for gun ownership rights has largely thwarted attempts to tighten controls.

Advocates of gun ownership rights saw Monday's massacre as evidence of the need to relax gun laws rather than tighten them.

"All the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last 10 years were stopped because a law-abiding citizen -- a potential victim -- had a gun," said Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America.

"The latest school shooting at Virginia Tech demands an immediate end to the gun-free zone law which leaves the nation's schools at the mercy of madmen."

Well they released information of who the killer was... and he planned it

He also sent a package to a American news agency... filled with notes, videos and photos... I also heard on the news that he added some strong opinion of Christianity and Hedonism, but I couldn't find any information on the Wikipedia article just by a quick scan(I will wait for some news agencies to report more theories).

Bluegray on the Wikipedia article posted in my first post they had the following to say about gun laws:

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The massacre reignited the gun control debate in the United States, with proponents of anti-gun legislation claiming guns are too accessible (and hence Cho readily acquired them) and proponents of gun rights and the Second Amendment claiming guns are not accessible enough (and hence none of Cho's victims were armed in the gun-free "safe zone", so none of them were able to defend themselves from his attacks). Note that the much-debated federal Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 is not an issue in this incident; that law applies only to elementary and secondary schools, not to colleges and universities.

I do feel it's a good point. Gun-free zones is not a solution if a madman can still get their hands on to a gun(or in this case two guns) I will call this once again human error *duck* not that I'm justifying it but you can't blame something else for what people do: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people".

The massacre reignited the gun control debate in the United States, with … proponents of gun rights and the Second Amendment claiming guns are not accessible enough (and hence none of Cho's victims were armed in the gun-free "safe zone", so none of them were able to defend themselves from his attacks).

"I'm an arsonist and I say that you can fight fire with fire! So lift the restrictions on napalm, potassium chlorate and phosphorus right away!"

… I will call this once again human error *duck* not that I'm justifying it but you can't blame something else for what people do: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people".

Please explain this "human error" oddity because the above reads in effect as, "Cho, a human, acted in error when shooting all those people, and he did so because of human error." If this interpretation holds, it would be a tautology that doesn't address what prompted the "human error" in the first place, or what allowed it to continue and escalate to the proportions it did. After all, everyone wants to know why Cho went ballistic.

"Ovens don't bake pies, people bake pies." That's true enough as far as it goes, but when setting out to bake a pie, you'd be a bit, … uhm …, stuffed without an oven — which doesn't, of course, prevent you from seeking an alternative means of baking.

"Ovens don't bake pies, people bake pies." That's true enough as far as it goes, but when setting out to bake a pie, you'd be a bit, … uhm …, stuffed without an oven — which doesn't, of course, prevent you from seeking an alternative means of baking.

'Luthon64

I agree totally with your statement. The plain fact of the matter is that this young man managed to get his hands on a gun and sufficient ammunition with the intention of wreaking vengeance on a world that he regarded as having mistreated him. The fact that his viewpoint may have by all accounts been totally delusional does not detract from the fact that he believed that this was an acceptable option. I am totally opposed to guns being available to anybody other than the military or well-trained law enforcement officials. The tragedy here is that this man was freely able to get a gun and kill 32 people.

If the U.S.A. had more restrictive gun laws, this tragedy might not have occurred. He might have found another outlet for his pain and anger...but hindsight is always made with 20/20 vision.I am just sorry for all those that lost loved ones.

"Cho, a human, acted in error when shooting all those people, and he did so because of human error."

*blush* Yip you are correct, what I have written in my previous post is a bit odd. But thanks for pointing it out to me, so I learn(free schooling ).

What I tried to explain(or so I think) it wasn't the weapons that killed all the innocent people but Cho(Human) using the weapons (So in affect the weapons killed the people... I'm so confused ) and that is wrong(a error on his/Cho's side) or so did my Sunday school teacher taught me "Thou Shall Not Kill" and hopefully my moral sense of what is good/right and evil/wrong.

"Human Error" - There was some controversy over the use of the word in a other post as well, and I'm starting to think/know I'm using the two words incorrectly. I did a quick wiki on the word and found a article on "Human reliability" but the article is orientated around "human factors engineering".

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...Human performance/error can be affected by many factors such as age, circadian rhythms, state of mind, physical health, attitude, emotions, propensity for certain common mistakes...

So if I speak of "Human error" I refer to the conditions of the person in question. I will also normally state it's not the group or object's fault but the person in question fault, in this case the Cho(The person) and weapons(Object). Is this wrong or is there a better way to state it? (Free schooling)

On the subject of Gun Laws, do you guys really feel banning guns is going solve the problem, in a country like RSA?(I know we are at the moment talking about USA but "Local is lekker") Because won't criminals still get their hands on illegal weapons?

It seems to me, then, that if human error – defined as faulty action resulting from factors such as state of mind, physical health, attitude, emotions, propensity for certain common mistakes, errors and cognitive biases (i.e. defective reasoning habits and/or inadequate information) – is the pivotal agent in many such tragedies, if not all of them, we are duty-bound, if for no other reason than to avoid such a thing befalling oneself and loved ones, to critique it whenever we notice it to occur.

Would you disagree?

On the gun issue, I cannot speak for Q.E.D. (or anyone else), but for me it's not a question of an outright banning of all firearms; it's a question of controlling their availability and access to them. To extend the pie-baking analogy I put forward earlier, the fact that an oven is not readily available will have considerable weight on whether or not to proceed at all with the pie-making exercise. What is needed, I think, are stringent and rigid gun restriction measures, such as periodic psychological profiling for suitability and licensing of gun owners, stiff penalties for the owner where a firearm falls into the wrong hands and/or is used in the commission of a crime, random checks for strict compliance with gun storage by-laws (à la TV licences), rigorous separation between, and enforcement of, licences to own and licences to carry, and so on.

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution, among other things, guarantees US citizens the right to keep and bear arms. The reasoning is that the people themselves, if they so choose, have at their disposal the means and power to resist an oppressive government. This makes sense if one remembers that the Constitution and Amendment were drawn up shortly after the US had freed itself of British rule in the War of Independence. However, this rationale for the ready availability of arms is no longer quite as compelling as it was then, yet it still features prominently alongside self-defence whenever the US gun issue is raised.

I would also like to agree on your viewpoint on gun control in South Africa. But South Africa is a country that is "ruled by crime" and enforcing such strict gun control will not in my opinion help the crime rate. Because criminals will still have access to illegal guns. I fell you will only disarm honest people and make them easy victims.

It would be interesting to see some statistics on guns making its rounds in South Africa and how illegal guns compares to legal guns for example: How many times legal guns is used in crime vs how many times illegal guns is used in crime.

It isn't my definition; it was taken from the opening paragraphs of the Wikipedia link you provided earlier. However, the question was much less about whether we can agree on a definition of "Human Error" than about whether we should address it whenever we notice it. So, do you agree that we should, as a general rule, point out and attempt to rectify such "Human Error" whenever it happens?

But South Africa is a country that is "ruled by crime" and enforcing such strict gun control will not in my opinion help the crime rate. Because criminals will still have access to illegal guns. I fell you will only disarm honest people and make them easy victims.

I'm sorry, but it is not at all clear to me how tighter gun control could disarm or even disadvantage honest people on a large scale. Sure, one can expect a few cases where individuals are found not competent to own a firearm or whose firearms are confiscated for some other lawful reason, but if they are, on the whole, honest people who own firearms, they will by definition be mostly law-abiding (properly licensed and registered) owners in the first place, subject to the applicable laws, and so retain their firearms. And it seems to me that the issue of the crime rate would be addressed to a significant part with tighter gun control, provided that it is effectively managed, simply because many crimes would be much harder to commit as a result of the difficulty of obtaining firearms and ammunition.

It would be interesting to see some statistics on guns making its rounds in South Africa and how illegal guns compares to legal guns for example: How many times legal guns is used in crime vs how many times illegal guns is used in crime.

I think that you would need first to give a strict definition of "legal" and "illegal" firearms. For example, when exactly does a properly licensed and registered handgun stolen from a locked safe that was breached during a burglary become "illegal," if it ever does so? Does it revert to a "legal" status when in the hands of its current proper owner? Would it be "legal" in the hands of an on-duty officer of the law? Or is "legal" just a synonym for "registered?" We can also reasonably expect that in South Africa there remain very many "illegal" firearms, in particular AK47s, from the Struggle Years, and it is not clear how we are to treat them from either a legal or a statistical perspective.

If I am correct in assuming that you mean to imply that "illegal" weapons feature in crimes far more frequently (or at a significantly higher rate) than do "legal" weapons, then the need for better gun control seems inescapably to follow from the observation. Or am I missing something?

So, do you agree that we should, as a general rule, point out and attempt to rectify such "Human Error" whenever it happens?

I can't see why I should not agree, if something is wrong and one can fix the problem/"error" one should fix the problem. But this again can lead to conflict because sometimes a problem only arise from personal preference and thus the solution to the problem is only a opinion.

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I'm sorry, but it is not at all clear to me how tighter gun control could disarm or even disadvantage honest people on a large scale.

I would agree with you. I saw "Strict gun control" as "no guns at all" and it sometimes feel to me that is what the government and some organizations is pushing for.

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It would be interesting to see some statistics on guns making its rounds in South Africa and how illegal guns compares to legal guns for example: How many times legal guns is used in crime vs how many times illegal guns is used in crime.

It was just something I said that would be interesting to know , without laying out guidelines or definitions and I didn't imply anything like

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... that "illegal" weapons feature in crimes far more frequently (or at a significantly higher rate) than do "legal" weapons, then the need for better gun control seems inescapably to follow from the observation...

I can't see why I should not agree, if something is wrong and one can fix the problem/"error" one should fix the problem. But this again can lead to conflict because sometimes a problem only arise from personal preference and thus the solution to the problem is only a opinion.

But we are not, in general, talking of personal preferences, e.g. cherry vs. banana flavour or whether Madonna's music is better than PJ Harvey's; rather, we look retrospectively at beliefs and thinking that have had objectively harmful consequences. Clearly, my belief, as a bitter and disaffected youth, that god and my fellows have abandoned me repeatedly in my hours of need (and that therefore I am justified in summarily shooting several of those whom I consider to be my antagonists) is a quite different kind of "opinion" to that about cherry being better than banana. The important questions that need answering are (a) how can these harmful beliefs be harboured and allowed to fester to the point where they procure such radical action, and (b) what can be done to undermine or even prevent a recurrence. I'm sure you'll also agree that vigorously promoting "reasonableness" in its widest sense will go a long way in the latter context. We just need to agree on an adequate definition for it. While it seems to me that you are happy to accept some sacred cows that may not be subjected to critical scrutiny, I happen to disagree: where and how exactly do we draw the line between the sacred and the secular, and who gets to decide which is which and by what criteria?

While it seems to me that you are happy to accept some sacred cows that may not be subjected to critical scrutiny, I happen to disagree: where and how exactly do we draw the line between the sacred and the secular, and who gets to decide which is which and by what criteria?

I do believe everything needs to be subjected to critical scrutiny because thats the only way one will separate the truth(please I don't even want to go into the whole truth and absolute truth subject, it's just word I used to describe something that is real if it bothers you replace it with synonym) from the fiction(non truth).

I'm puzzled. If that is so why, then, do you insist elsewhere in these pages that the content of certain religious pursuits (your own) be exempt from such scrutiny?

Hi Anacoluthon64

This is getting a bit off topic. But I'm not sure where I insisted that the content of certain religious pursuits should exempt from such scrutiny. If you would be so kind to point me to these pages I will gladly reply with a explanation or see the fault in my ways and apologize for it.

But I'm not sure where I insisted that the content of certain religious pursuits should exempt from such scrutiny. If you would be so kind to point me to these pages …

Okay, I fully retract with apologies the "insist" part. It is an inference of mine, based on the totality of relevant replies you have given, particularly those in the "This is why we don't need religion" thread. You repeatedly talk of "human error" (which doesn't actually explain anything) rather than facing or even acknowledging the obvious alternative that a religious (faith-based, anti-evidence) mode of thinking is directly responsible for many of the ills we observe in the world, specifically in this case the tensions between catholics and muslims reported in the article in that thread's opening post. It seems to me that your doing so is a misplaced and ultimately doomed attempt to protect, rather than critically examine, your own and others' religious beliefs.

My suspicions in this regard are strengthened considerably in this present thread where "human error" is once again the culprit, and elsewhere (the Creationist Stew, Anyone? thread) when you seem to hold the christian bible as a reliable source of knowledge, when you call a contrary blog entry "a bit flawed" but don't give any reasons, and when you decry "secular reasoning" over its failure to provide any eternal values, unlike religions pretend to do. It seems to me, then, that you consider religion, by its very nature, worthy of deep reverence and refuse to entertain any suggestion that it is, in fact, the actual problem, a notion that troubles me because it goes to the heart of what this forum is actually all about: evidence for beliefs.